Man that’s wild that’s like saying you bought a computer but the manufacturer limits on how much you can use it
2 Likes
Phew, what a discussion.
I totally understand the n8n team for trying to make it a selfsustaining business.
My experience, after trying to negotiate an enterprise license isn´t the best one.
We ended up with a pricing in the Range of 600k to 1Mio € per year.
I´d like to give something back for building such a great software, but however I need to justify the spent in front others in our corporation. Since n8n got a lot of visibility on Business Networks more people ask, if they can get access and try it out. But every time speaking about prices I just look into shocked faces.
I don´t have any clever proposal for a better pricing, but the current one is really a blocker to get the enterprise license.
2 Likes
I’m exploring n8n as a potential replacement for a lightweight Flask application with a few endpoints. However, when you’re working with dozens of small services, the cost of the enterprise version becomes quite high, especially for self-hosted environments.
It would be great to see a licensing model that’s based on workflow tiers, for example, a plan for up to 100 workflows, then another for 200, and so on. Since it’s self-hosted, paying based on execution volume feels counterintuitive for many use cases.
A more flexible model could make the platform more accessible to smaller teams or developers with many small automations, and also help build long-term loyalty within the community.
1 Like
I have been following the changes to n8n’s pricing closely and I have to be honest, I am frustrated. I want to start by saying that I am a fan of n8n. I run multiple self hosted instances, I have built hundreds of workflows, and I have recommended it to a lot of people. I believe in the product and the mission. That is exactly why this new pricing direction feels so out of step with the reality of many of your most invested users.
For those of us self hosting, we are already taking on all of the infrastructure costs. We buy and maintain our own servers, pay for hosting, manage backups, monitor uptime, and handle scaling. That is not free. The reason many of us self host is to have more control and to keep costs predictable. Moving to a model that charges per execution on top of all of that feels like we are being charged twice for the same thing.
It also creates a constant pressure to reduce usage instead of encouraging experimentation and growth. I run over 400 automations across my instances. If I have to think about the cost of every execution, I will either consolidate and cut back or I will start looking for alternatives. That is not because I want to leave n8n but because I have to make the numbers work.
I understand that you are trying to make automation more accessible and that you have to build a sustainable business. I want you to succeed and keep growing. But it feels like the pricing is now more aligned with extracting value from heavy users than partnering with them. A model that ties self hosted pricing to features, support, or even tiers of capacity without charging per run would feel much more fair.
Right now, the message this sends to long time advocates is that our use case does not fit where n8n is headed. That is disappointing because we have been the ones building with it, stress testing it, giving feedback, and bringing others into the community. I am hoping there is still room to find a middle ground that keeps self hosted power users on board without punishing us for being the kind of users who push the platform to its limits.
9 Likes
I really do not get any of this. Why is there a 50Eur Plan for Cloud and Self-Hosted starts at 800Eur ? I just tried to Share my SMTP Credentials in my Self-Hosted Instance and I can not do this, this is just madness.
1 Like
Cash grab, if you have the money to self-host, then you must have the money for an €800 license.
However, Jan doesn’t care that there are other legitimate reasons for not using N8N in the cloud, such as data protection.
I also don’t want all my Credentials for various services to be stored in the cloud, where anyone can access them if there is a security breach.
The recommendation by N8N is, all should use the same account or simply buy the €800 license.
This, in turn, brings with it an even greater forced risk, because now dozens of people are using the same login details at the same time, and if just one of them accidentally loses or reveals them, you’re screwed!
I have to echo the terrible pricing being offered to self-hosted customers. 800 bucks per month, and you get zero support? Why not add ALL of the features to the 800-dollar plan and allow companies to PURCHASE support if they want to? Give more options…. We should have an unlimited number of execs since its our hardware.
Great software, horrible pricing for self-hosted.
Yes like having the features from the cloud-pro would be enough for 50 USD. We do self-host, because of data and access to our cloud-network and databases and not because we are a giant company. It is so sad, that i can not even share a single workflow in my self-hosted instance. The self-hosted edition is useless without paying. Why is there no Plan for 50-100 USD/month ???
I’ve started using the $200 version of Claude Code for most of my automation. It’s a lot easier, and I am saving $600 a month. Seriously, give that a go. You would be surprised what you can do with Claude Code!
1 Like
We spent months talking with builders across our community — solo developers automating side projects, fast-growing startups, and enterprise teams deploying complex workflows at scale.
The feedback was clear: most automation tools have pricing that gets in the way of building.
Limits on workflows, charges per step, or billing based on processing time force users into trade-offs, restrict experimentation, and make scaling across teams difficult.
We knew we had to address this pain point.
It’s pure mockery that Jan and the Team is displaying here in public. . @bartv @melinda.n8n @Adeline
-
Foster adoption of n8n by everyone.
Solo builders, small teams, startups, enterprises — we want everyone to build more efficiently with n8n. Pricing shouldn’t get in the way, it should support the work.
Homelab users, single developers, small teams “not startup“ and everyone else, who is running a self-hosted N8N gets the middle finger!
The joke is, they really do act like this and think that they are doing everything right and that it is a win for single developers, small teams, etc.
But the new pricing model does not benefit anyone who runs a self-hosted n8n server.
Don’t be fooled: with the business plan for self-hosted, you can share a maximum of 6 projects and your workflow executions are reduced from unlimited to 40k/m.
All of this for an extremely cheap €667/m or €8004/y. 
As @jan already told us, he thinks this discussion leads nowhere and he will not discuss this.
Sorry, think it is not the best idea to get into a huge discussion now. It would probably not lead anywhere (at least that is what history taught me, see this thread) and I can have more impact in other ways.
So much for discussing it with individual developers, small teams, etc.
3 Likes
@jan I’m really struggling to understand the reasoning behind the new self-hosted pricing model.
Charging for executions or concurrent executions makes perfect sense in a cloud offering, since the provider is taking care of the underlying infrastructure, scaling, and maintenance. In that scenario, customers are paying for the convenience and the actual compute resources they consume.
But on self-hosted setups, the picture is very different. In this case, n8n only provides the license. All the compute, deployment, scaling, and ongoing maintenance are entirely on the customer. This means we’re already taking on costs and responsibilities that the cloud plan covers.
What feels off is the comparison:
-
On cloud: 50k executions for €120/month
-
On self-hosted: €667/month for only 40k executions
That’s more than 5x the cost, for fewer executions, while we’re the ones covering the infrastructure bills. The math just doesn’t add up.
For comparison, take Tableau: they also have both cloud and self-hosted options. Their cloud licenses are slightly more expensive than their self-hosted licenses, which makes sense because of the extra storage, hosting, and maintenance Tableau provides. They do add limits in the cloud product (e.g. storage quotas, capped automated flows) that higher-tier customers can unlock, but in self-hosted environments they don’t add artificial restrictions. Instead, the responsibility is on the customer to size and maintain their own infrastructure. That model feels fair and balanced.
I understand n8n wanted to avoid a per-user or per-workflow model, which could have its own drawbacks. But tying the self-hosted license to execution counts feels like the wrong direction. It punishes teams who are investing in running n8n themselves, while the cloud pricing looks much more reasonable.
We wanted to subscribe to a self-hosted plan (currently using the community edition) to unlock features such as multi-user support and sharing. But given the price, the restrictions, and our current usage (around 40k executions/week, mostly very simple flows), that’s definitely a no-go. You are loosing money here.
5 Likes
Yes same here, with this pricing strategy we actively resist paying anything to n8n. We now use one single admin user and share this account in the team for the sell-hosted instance. For the n8n-software itself we would love to spend 100eur/Month for having at least the cloud Pro Fetatues like admin-roles and stuff. @jan
4 Likes
Hi, isn’t this open source being contributed but public and not just dev from your company ? Kinda harsh reading this. If you say this is 100% coded and maintained by you and your company , I agree
Side note:
I think it’s incredibly short-sighted that you can’t even collect 30-day execution metrics within the self-hosted free version to be even able to estimate what your self-hosted licensing costs are easily.
Unlocking the Last 30 days view for this purpose seems like a no-brainer.
1 Like